Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Season 4, Ep. 9 - Oh, great! A Fractured Fairy Tale

By John Kirk

Rating: C

Let’s just get this out of the way: this episode is lazy. It’s unimaginative and quite frankly, I think it is the worst episode I’ve seen in this entire franchise.

Re-using stories seems to be the fall-back story-writing gimmick for this season. Sadly, this was not the episode to bring back.

Security Chief La’an (Christina Chong) revisits the fantasy world of The Elysian Kingdom

I’m talking about the episode when the crew turned into the cast of Dr M’Benga’s (Babs Olusanmokun) daughter’s favourite story? It was titled “The Elysian Kingdom” from Season One.  It was cute. It had some charm and it tapped into the background of Dr. M’Benga.

But it wasn’t worthy of a re-visit.

So, here’s the premise: the Enterprise encounters a flat world that seems to defy any type of explanation as to why it should be there. When a landing party beams down to investigate, it’s the Elysian Kingdom.

Let me back up here. Security Chief La’an Noonien Singh (Christina Chong) has been feeling aggressive in the last few episodes. Her rage and temper have gotten the better of her. Apparently, the objective in this episode is to resolve that situation.

The problem is: we don’t know why her rage was getting the better of her in the first place. Before trying to resolve the problem, it would be great if the episode even identified the reason for the rage. That’s a major flaw in the premise.

Why is the planet there? This also gets thrown into the file of “frustrating lack of explanation”.

Favourite storylines are usually brought back. Why this one was, is beyond my understanding. It doesn’t make the list of popular stories and it’s not even accurate with the original as there are characters who should have been there and new characters who don’t have doubles.

It’s a rambling plot that seems to have been thrown together with very little direction or purpose. The characters all have their own agendas … including the evil queen, played by Uhura (Celia Rose-Gooding) who seems intent on dominating her world. But as she’s already the queen, what’s the point?

Actually, this really had nothing to do with any theme we’d associate with Star Trek. I wrote in an earlier review that Strange New Worlds has a problem identifying what its identity should be. This is another indication that this series still doesn’t know itself. The lack of thematic consistency is a major reason why this show is still having problems retaining its existing fan base.

A good sword-and-sorcery storyline is a fun setting to place Star Trek. Think back to when the crew of the Enterprise-D was transformed into the Merry Men of Nottingham by Q (The Episode was titled Qpid). Q’s purpose was to always torment Picard and his crew by showing them how fallible they were. This was the conceit that allowed Gene Roddenberry to demonstrate how, despite humanity’s advancements, humans still needed to be reminded of their basic strengths.

That was the purpose for the medieval setting in that episode, but it tied into one of the main themes of The Next Generation. It was relevant.

Strange New Worlds should be about setting the stage for Kirk’s early years. If anyone else can think of another theme, I’d be interested to hear it.  It’s like this episode fails to take in the bigger picture of the franchise.

Sadly, it’s a disappointing addition to this season. Hopefully, the next episode will see some redemption and less lazy thinking.

Star Trek SNW 409 - “Once La’an a Time.” Director: Sydney Freeland. Cast: Anson Mount, Ethan Peck, Jess Bush, Christina Chong, Babs Olusanmokum, Celia Rose-Gooding, Melissa Navia, Rebecca Romijn, Martin Quinn, Carol Kane, Paul Wesley.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds streams on Paramount Plus and is shown on CTV’s Sci-Fi Channel every Thursday.